Minced Beef, Creole

A leftover-roast dish that assumes you have both a Sunday joint and a pot of Creole sauce already at hand. The whole thing hangs on the sauce, which the original does not spell out here.

• SaltspoonA saltspoon is a quarter teaspoon. Two saltspoons of salt is half a teaspoon, one saltspoon of white pepper a quarter teaspoon — reasonable for about a pound of cooked beef, though leftover roast is often already seasoned, so taste before adding all of it.
• Creole sauceIn books of this period this generally means onion, green pepper and often celery softened in butter with tomatoes (fresh or canned), sometimes garlic, bay and cayenne, simmered down thick, though versions differ from book to book. Something in the region of two cups of finished sauce to a pound of meat; make it before the beef goes anywhere near the pan.
• Finely mince, not grindMincing at this date meant chopping with a knife or working the meat through a hand mincer, not reducing it to paste; pulsing cooked roast in a food processor will overdo it. The recipe asks for a fine mince, so chop small by hand.
• The twelve minutesThe beef is already cooked, so this stretch is largely about heating it through in the sauce and letting it take up flavour. Keep it at a bare simmer; a hard boil will string out cold roast beef.
• Which roastBeef that was rare when it went into the refrigerator works best, since it gets a second cooking here. Well-done leftovers benefit from a slightly looser sauce so they do not dry out.
• Yield and servingA pound of minced cooked beef with sauce would serve three or four. The 'deep dish' is simply a deep serving dish; rice, boiled potatoes or toast go naturally with it.